Is Christmas a pagan holiday? (14 min)
In this podcast from the folks at Creation Ministries International, the answer given is no, and it wouldn’t even matter if it started that way.
People we should know better: Dr. John Sanford
This is a great profile of an atheist-turned-Christian and geneticist of renown, who is now using his expertise to highlight how the evidence points to a recent creation.
Win-win denial: the false justification for economic envy
Is the only way to get ahead by pushing others back? Do society’s winners win only by making others lose? To illustrate by way of analogy, if Sally buys a shirt from Tony’s store, is only one of them better off? Is one of them worse off? Or did both of them “win”?
Potential solutions to the plastics problem?
Our oceans are full of plastics, but Justin Trudeau’s single-use plastics ban won’t help since it won’t stop the flow of trash entering the oceans over in Asia and other developing countries. His approach comes with a cost and creates its own plastics problems. But if doing nothing would be an improvement over Trudeau’s approach, applying our God-given brains to bring some creativity to the issue is an even better idea. And that’s what some folk are doing right now. A creationist take adds further context.
Canada’s conversion therapy law commits six secular sins
The first and foremost problem with a law banning conversion therapy is that it runs right up against God’s Law – it bans what God commands, that we tell and help sinners to repent and believe. Another problem with this ban is that it doesn’t even live up to secular standards, which is the focus of Dr. Hendrik van der Breggen’s article here.
Teach us to number our days
Why do we waste so much of our time? One reason might be that we always overestimate how much we have. “Our mind tells us to estimate a full eighty years or so; our heart tells us 900, give or take.” As Greg Morse writes in this article:
Some have fifteen years left; others more; others less. Will you live them? Will you receive normal days as spectacular gifts from a good God and spend them in his service?
Stop subsidizing sports (5 min)
In Samuel’s warning about kings (1 Samuel 8:10-22), God teaches us that those in charge tend to be overbearing, as we can see with our own governments taking over entire sectors like healthcare, insurance, and education. So should we be asking it to get into the entertainment industry too, using its taxing power to take from Paul so that Peter can be amused?
A government that is involved in everything is also a government that can use that reach and influence for its godless agenda. Yes, even when it comes to sports stadiums. The Western Australian gov’t has since backed down, but they were going to use their investment in sports facilities to discriminate against Christians. One reason Christians should want smaller government is to diminish the power it can then use against us.
